Tag Archives: Prison

Q: My friend was recently incarcerated in prison in Florida and I’m worried about her safety because she’s transgender. Are there laws that can protect her?

A: Unfortunately, the situation your friend is in is all too common — prisons incarcerate a transgender woman in a male, rather than a female, facility where she is at constant risk of sexual abuse and other violence. When someone is incarcerated, their health and safety becomes the responsibility of the state. But not all prisons protect the people in their custody, tolerating a culture where staff threaten, beat or sexually assault some people in custody or permit other incarcerated people to do so, just because they are transgender.

If your friend is threatened or abused, it is important that she file as soon as possible an “administrative grievance,” or complaint, that puts the facility on notice that she believes her rights have been violated. Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, a federal law passed in 1996, people in custody who wish to file a lawsuit in federal court must first exhaust all administrative remedies available to them, sometimes within very short deadlines.

This step is crucial, because correctional facilities use the failure to exhaust administrative remedies as a reason to ask courts to throw out cases filed by people in their custody.

If she first exhausts, she may be able to sue in federal court. In October of last year, Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Passion Star, a transgender woman currently in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, arguing that TDCJ officials are deliberately indifferent to her safety. Passion is in constant danger of sexual assault, but TDCJ officials have ignored or made her problems worse, even though she has filed dozens of grievances, complaints and requests to be placed in safekeeping.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act, a federal law to eliminate sexual abuse of people in custody, has provisions to protect incarcerated transgender people, if it is implemented fully. Among other things, the PREA standards instruct prison officials to screen and separate particularly vulnerable people — such as transgender women in male facilities — from likely aggressors and make individualized housing decisions prioritizing gender identity and safety, not merely genital characteristics.

While most states are working to implement PREA, some states — like Texas, Florida and Indiana, instead decided to pass up funding earmarked for the prevention of sexual assault. Perhaps not coincidentally, Texas is home to five of the 10 prisons with the highest rates of reported rapes in the country.

Sign our petition urging Texas to fully implement and abide by the Prison Rape Elimination Act. See more at here.

U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means this week sentenced Henry Clay Glaspell, 34, of Arlington, to 14 months in prison after Gaspell pleaded guilty to a hate crime charge in connection with an arson fire at the children’s playground at the Dar El-Eman Islamic Education Center in Arlington in July 2010, according to this reportfrom the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Means ordered Glaspell, who has been free on bond, to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on Nov. 21.

Glaspell also admitted that he had stolen and damaged some of the mosque’s property, that he had thrown used cat litter at the mosque’s front door and that he had shouted racial and ethnic slurs at people at the mosque on several occasions. Glaspell said his actions were motivated by hatred for people of Arabic or Middle Eastern descent.

For his part, Holts blamed the crime on booze: I'm really not a bad person," he said. "I had too much to drink and made some bad decisions based on that, and I am sorry for."

Judy Wright, Scott's mother, appears to understand Holts' contrition, and remarked, "It's sad when you see a young man handcuffed and taken away." Still, she does believe Holts was motivated by hate: "After eight minutes, you felt the need to return to the victim and deliver some more blows to his already damaged head. This was a crime filled with hate that thankfully was all caught on camera."

What are you thoughts, reader? Has justice been done, or does Holt deserve a stiffer punishment?

Although I don't recall particularly enjoying the first two Bill and Ted movies, I am surprisingly excited to hear there will be a third installment of the Keanu Reeves-starring buddy adventure franchise.

What are you doing this weekend? If you live in San Francisco or New York, perhaps you should check out Howl, the Allen Ginsberg biopic starring James Franco; it opens in those cities today. Sorry, rest of America.

Lindsay Lohan's back in jail after failing a drug test. Should we feel bad for her clear dependence, or feel contempt over her disregard for the law?

NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker announced today that he's leaving the company after Comcast officially takes the reins. Comcast chief operating officer, Steve Burke, agreed on that timing, said Zucker: "He made it clear that they wanted to move on at the close of the deal and I was completely comfortable with that.”

Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the world's most famous Obama poster, says he has given up on the president's ability to make progressive change on matters like health care and lobbying restrictions: "Obama was the delivery device in theory. Now, I realize that he maybe is
not the correct delivery device, and I'll just deal with those issues
separately."

There goes another one: devastatingly handsomeInception actor Tom Hardy and his girlfriend Charlotte O'Reilly are engaged.

The LGBT-inclusive Indiana Youth Group has filed a lawsuit against the state's Bureau of Motor Vehicles for refusing a gay-friendly vanity plate that would raise money for the group. The BMV says the group does not prove it's mission has an "uncommon level of statewide distinction and benefit."